Contracts, Crime and Critters

A contract gets signed, a check gets cut, the city council approves the check without questioning it. There's enough embarrassment to go around with this one. We walk through the story in which a grant-funded documentary tied to the planned airport museum honoring Tuskegee Airman Alva Temple suddenly becomes a case study in municipal oversight, public funds and who is responsible when procedures break down.

From there, we change gears to two issues people feel every day. On violent crime, we talk about why community policing cannot be a one-way street, why fear keeps witnesses quiet, and why programs only help if families actually use them. On animal control, we explain the city-county-Humane Society interlocal setup, what is changing, and what residents should know about roaming dogs, liability, and emergency calls for aggressive animals.

Transcript

Cold Open And Show Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I don't know what he has come up with today to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

I'm not asking you to hide anything. You know, no put it out there. Let the people see it.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

I've never not worked in a hospital working department.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

You can't argue with anybody when they're putting facts in your face. Zach, that's a hard question. I have no answer for it. From the opinion page of the commercial dispatch. This is Between the Headlines.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

This week on Between the Headlines, does the mayor need the consent of the city council to sign contracts? Also, let's talk about violent crime in the friendly city and animal control. What is the status of things? We've got thoughts, but first. Retirement looks different for everyone, so your plan should be built around you. For over 40 years, Financial Concepts has helped people create retirement strategies that fit their lives. Our team in Columbus takes the time to understand your goals and build a plan that works for you. Wherever you are in your journey, we're ready to help. We plan retirement. Financial Concepts is a registered investment advisor. This episode of Between the Headlines is brought to you by Bank First, a bank headquartered right here in Columbus, Mississippi. That means your banking decisions aren't made hundreds of miles away by someone who doesn't know you. They're made here locally by bankers who know your name and care about the community. At Bank First, we're more than bankers. We're your neighbors. Whether we're cheering in the stands, catching up at a local pancake breakfast, or celebrating milestones across our community, we're part of the moments that matter most. Stop by your local Bank First branch or visit BankFirstFS.com to learn more. Bank First is a member FDIC and Equal Housing lender, Bank NMLS 454063.

Host Banter And Local Culture

SPEAKER_02 1:52

You are listening to Between the Headlines with a husband of but one wife and not given to much wine, Mr. Zach Flair, who is the managing editor of the dispatch, and my name is Dave Chisholm. Zach, were you among the 26% of Baptists who voted to have women folk preacher? You know I had to touch on that. Well, I tell you, there's there's lots of cultural things that we could talk about. Do we even have women preachers in the friendly city? They're around?

SPEAKER_03 2:31

Well, there was I'm not sure they're in Baptist churches, but they're around.

SPEAKER_02 2:34

Well, I I know the Methodist Church had one, and then now we've got Vaughn Stafford, who um has more words than any women preacher I've ever listened to. I thought you went I thought you went to Fairview. I I go all over the place. Shout out to Vaughn Stafford. All right.

The Contract Nobody Saw Coming

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Uh today we uh want to open up the program to talk about a um an interesting revelation that happened within a city work session, and that is contracts for uh documentary that have been already paid in half, sounds like. And the work is already well underway. And the work is well underway. And has been since April. Unbenunced to the city council. Where do we start with this? All right.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

So first of all, I want to say right off the top that the idea that anything intentional or nefarious happened here is I think way off base. In any case, this was a procedural failure that resulted in an honest mistake. A procedural failure in the city of failure. I know it's shocking. Yeah. This is a shocking revelation. But it was it was something to watch when uh Susan Wilder, the grant administrator, they've got this grant for the uh Alva Temple uh documentary. It's gonna be part of the museum that's gonna be at the airport, honoring the uh Tuskegee Airman and uh member of the team that won the first top gun competition in 1949. So this guy served in World War II, um helped win a top gun competition, the very first one, uh in 49, and then ends up settling down uh for the rest of his life in Columbus after his military service. That's a big deal. Yeah, uh real big deal. However, but yep, so uh Susan Wilder, the grant administrator for the city, did yeoman's work getting this, uh getting grants for this museum, which would include this documentary. There have been private donations. There have also been, you know, city and county and CVB match money uh toward this grant. So there's a pretty good pot of money to make this a uh uh to make this a a special place and and something that people are gonna go want to go to the airport and see.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

And so the documentary itself is like when you go in a museum and they've got that little room you sit in. Yeah. And every 10 minutes they start it over that.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

Well, it's not gonna be every 10 minutes because this is gonna be an hour long.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Yeah, so this is gonna be a uh a near feature length presentation.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Well, I would hope so, because this is like a what a $36,000.

SPEAKER_03 5:34

$37.5, $37,500, and the kicker is you know, plus traveling per diem if they if they have to go places, and that's where this kind of came to a head.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

So Susan Wilder and uh uh Carlos Rosales, it's his his bunch that's doing the documentary.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

And his son Roberto.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Um they tracked down this 102-year-old guy living in Denver who served with Alva Temple and was also on that team that won the Top Gun competition. He's still around, he's still mentally sharp enough to do an interview. So this is this is lucky. This is very fortunate for them. And they've tracked him down.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

And he's not a candidate, we're gonna fly him to Columbus.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Right, we're not flying him to Columbus. Uh, we're not gonna, you know, we're not gonna disturb him too much, but he's willing to talk to us and we can go to him. So Susan comes up, she says, All right, look, um, y'all need to authorize the trip to Denver because we're leaving Sunday. We've got we've got private donations for the lodging and the um rental car and the gas. So we've got citizens who've just said, okay, we'll pay for that. But we we're short on the mills. Need y'all to authorize us paying from the grant from the pot of grant money up to $700, which are now public funds because City matched it and accepted it. Um up to $700 for meals, meals that will include the Rosales' meals over there. Roderick Smith, Ward II councilman, he was on top of a potential issue there. He said, Can we I support this project, but can we pay for these meals? Um So there was a debate on whether they could pay for the mills and how they could do that. And you know, Jeff Turnage, the city attorney, is you know, postulating, okay, well, here's here's why I think you can, here's what you'd have to do, et cetera, et cetera. And then Susan says, Well, in the contract we have with this documentary company, the what you say says we will do this. The what you say in the contract. Yeah, the contract. We have a contract with these people, yeah. And uh he said, Jeff, have you seen this contract? Just, I don't know. I don't know what she's talking about. And Susan said, Sure you do, because the mayor signed it on March 35th. Whoops. And then the whole meeting went just up in smoke. And the mayor's not there. The mayor's not there. He's traveling. He's on city business, but he's out, he's out of town. Ethel's running. Vice Mayor Ethel Stewart's running the meeting. Everybody at this point is confused, except for, I guess, ostensibly Susan, who thought that she had, you know, checked all of her boxes. Mayor's signature is on this contract. She doesn't have a contract, the copy of the contract with her, so they say, Well, what contract? She's like, You want me to go get you a copy of it? They said, Please do. So she leaves, comes back 45 minutes later with copies of the contract to show everybody.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Well, what did the council do while they were waiting on her?

SPEAKER_03 8:53

Uh oh, they did the rest of the work session. But uh, figured they would smoke cigarettes or something. Smoking more than cigarettes after they got done with this. But so she comes back, shows them the contract, they're they're talking about it and looking at the contract. And um then Jeff says, Look, Mayor's already signed it. I think it's prudent that we just go ahead and approve the contract and approve the trip because this guy's not gonna work without getting his money. And then Susan says, Well, y'all have already paid him half.

SPEAKER_02 9:31

Man, that's a doozy right now.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Which I think nearly gave Jason Spears a heart attack.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

I bet that vein right there on his forehead started swelling up.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Okay, so digging into this more.

How It Got Signed And Paid

SPEAKER_03 9:46

Um the the this is what I understand happened. Susan gets the quotes for the documentary uh from the documentary companies, people willing to do the documentary. Um she picks the one that she thinks is the best. Not sure if it was the lowest, but she claims it was the best. Uh takes the contract to different people, including, according to her, Jeff Turnage. Jeff Turnage says, I don't remember that. Stephen Jones, the mayor, says I walked into my office, it was sitting, it was sitting by my door. Per my policy, anything sitting by my door has been reviewed by uh the city attorney and has gone through all of the necessary processes. So, you know, he looked it over to some degree and signed it. Did you know, I asked, well, that it was a contract with this documentary company to go ahead and go into business with them? No, I I d I didn't realize that. Oh boy.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

What do you recognize? Did you thought it was?

SPEAKER_03 10:52

Did you know? Well, he thought it was something he said in the paper that he thought it was something related to applying for a grant.

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

And so he signs it, trusting his people, whatever, but he doesn't check with anybody. He doesn't call Jeff and say, hey Jeff, this thing on my desk that's related to the blah blah blah. Have you seen this? No, he didn't do that. He signed it assuming that everything was fine. The council had not voted on this contract. It was not in the minutes. After he signs it, Jim Brigham, the CFO, cuts a check for the front end of the contract to Rosales' company.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

A big fat check.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

$18,750. It goes on the claims docket. So on April 7th, in the claims docket, which is okay, we've paid these bills, we've got to approve paying these bills because we owe this money and and we've got to have a vote on the record saying that we are approve of all of these expenditures.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

And it's in there.

SPEAKER_03 12:01

It's in there.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

What does it look like? Is it I mean, is it what what kind of details is it just like under a budget category?

SPEAKER_03 12:08

You can't miss it.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

It's there.

SPEAKER_03 12:10

It's there.

unknown 12:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

It's got the name of the company, what it's for, and the amount that was paid.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Well, apparently you can miss it though, because it feels like they did miss it.

SPEAKER_03 12:21

Well, in fairness, it's a 30 it was a 32-page document and it was on page 14 of it. But we've got a lot of people on the city council that want to be very meticulous about what's done and what's not. But they approved that claims docket with that expenditure on it, and then later on was like, what? If they if that claims docket had been fully reviewed, that what would have come April 7th? Hey, what is this? Okay. So there's a lot there's a lot happening here. What did the mayor think he was signing? I I'm not sure. I'm pretty certain that the mayor wasn't trying to circumvent the city council. If anything, he looked at that, said, I guess we've already approved that, signed it, and went on thinking that everything was fine. Um, and then just didn't just didn't check before. Well, I don't know. Didn't look behind. And then you've got the council who approves the claims docket with this on there, doesn't look behind. Now everybody's surprised and mad and all of this stuff. And I think when it comes right down to it, it's an honest mistake. Couldn't be. And it's something that I think is a learning experience for everybody involved, where it's like, okay, so if this is the process that we underwent for this contract, we probably need to tighten that up and make and and just just dot our I's and cross our T's back.

SPEAKER_02 13:47

No, no. Learning process by ass. This city council, well, no, that's not fair. This um the city of Columbus in years gone by, with some of these same people included, have had a very, very willy-nilly approach to money. Okay. Okay. And that's they've they've glossed over things. They've said no to forensic audits, they've had a very casual approach to these things. If you don't know what it is, you don't sign it. I agree with that. If you do sign it, and then after the fact you say to the paper, Well, I don't know what I signed, does that make it null and void? Does that mean the court's not? No.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

Well, I mean, and also, and to your point, I'm I'm gonna make a counterpoint to it, but to your point, uh, who's responsible for knowing? Who's responsible for knowing what was in that document? Well, was Jeff Turner's responsible Was Jeff Turnish primarily responsible for knowing what was in that document? Was Susan Wilder primarily responsible for knowing what was what was on Harry Truman's desk in the White House when he was president? Uh that that little sign that said the buck stops here.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:57

The buck stops with Stephen Jones when he put his signature on that document. And I agree with that, and I'll tell him that to his face. However, I don't think that it is a fair assessment to say that his overall approach to this has been willy-nilly. I think that you have in in this situation a lot of misunderstanding, a little bit of forgetting, and a mistake. The mistake is the responsibility of the mayor in this case. Now I'm gonna tell you what I'm concerned about. Um I'm not concerned about I'm con yeah, they're embarrassed, yeah, everybody's like mad at each other, whatever. They're gonna fix this. They're not gonna let this happen again. We're not gonna get the middle finger from the Jones administration like, first of all, I do what I want. You're not gonna get that. The appearance of things being what they need to be is a priority for this administration. And so something like this, it's gonna be handled, and it's I think it's gonna be handled correctly long term.

Accountability And Scapegoat Fears

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Except for there's one thing in Stephen's quote that really, really concerned me more than even I thought it was something else. And it was this. Susan's supposed to be writing grant, she's not supposed to be doing contracts. I really hope, I really, really deeply hope that that's not a setup for scapegoating her for this.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Well, Joe Mickens is not there to, you know, stink things up, but but yeah, I see the concern.

SPEAKER_03 16:43

Uh well, and I mean, so d uh she is not a department head. Um she is not somebody who should be held responsible for making sure that things are on the council agenda correctly, or making sure that things are on the minute. She knows what she knows, she's doing what she's doing, and she's gotten she's secured hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more than that, for the city since she started. She's very good at her job, she's she's got more energy than I'll ever have, and she's passionate about these projects. Um and I think that that needs to be noted. And start Stephen's sort of hinting uh that maybe that was Susan's and maybe that's not what he was saying, because we it it seemed like a hint that that shouldn't have been by my door because of Susan. Susan shouldn't have been out here working on this contract. Everybody knew that she was, she was talking about it publicly. So if you didn't know, it's because you weren't listening. And so I think it would be a mistake of the of the highest order for them to say, okay, well, somebody has got to pay the piper for this mistake publicly. Guess who it's gonna be? It's gonna be Susan. No, the mayor needs to look at himself and look at the public, say, I'm the mayor, I made the mistake, this is the mistake I made, this is what we're doing about it. That is what accountability looks like. And I feel like that this is a very good opportunity for Stephen Jones to chest up to that type of accountability and do it gracefully. Well, and I would, I would, I would definitely I would definitely encourage him to do that.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Well, maybe he'll do that, and I hope that he'll do that. But if he does not do that, I hope that Susan Wilder will do what Baptist Memorial Hospital did and stand up for herself. I imagine she probably will. I do have one other little tidbit about this topic, and that is it kind of brings up an issue.

Should Government Fund Film Projects

SPEAKER_02 18:55

Should the city government be in the film business to start with? I mean, you know, I'm gonna bring that up because, you know, and I'm looking at it's a documentary, okay. Is that is that press related or is that arts? Okay. But either way, I can't help but question what the government's role is in that. Well, I mean I mean it's a good, good, good, good thing, and and I want to see it and I want to hear about it, but it's like, you know, uh is there not is there not a private entity to to help bolster this up? Why why did why is there a $36,000 public funds contract to make it happen?

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Well, I mean it was a grant, David. It was a match grant. Well, yeah, it's a match grant. The city matched some, the county matched some, the CVBs put in some money, but but the Mississippi Humanities Council is uh is the majority of the funds here. And and I mean I'm I'm okay with that. I mean it's gonna be at a public facility, it's gonna be for public use and public access. Um and so contracting with a private entity to do um something for the public good is uh no different than I mean, should Casey Bush be putting asphalt on roads? Well, I Or Or should we be hiring uh or we should should we be taking bids and hiring private companies to put asphalt on roads?

SPEAKER_02 20:20

And I think that you gotta have asphalt, gotta have clean asphalt, gotta have sturdy asphalt. But when when it comes to the arts, uh I believe in museums.

SPEAKER_03 20:31

Okay, I believe in that are all often per very publicly funded.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, very very much so. I believe in creating the infrastructure for uh facilitating the arts and things of this sort. Uh but when when you talk about the city actually producing the art, it gets a little hairy, just my opinion. But you know, it this is a great thing. It was voted in favor four to one. Uh Gary Jefferson voted against it in principle, and I know why he did because we need not to be doing it this way.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Well, and I think that, you know uh Gary Jefferson's statements uh kind of rang pretty hard, as did Jason's. Um I think that there is a weariness. Uh in this I think that this case is a little different from the others that I think that gave them heartburn. But because I think that this was just this was just a fumbled football that nobody recovered. Um I don't think that anybody was trying to be slick, I don't think that anybody was trying to be nefarious, I think that this was a procedural breakdown that they can easily identify. This is how it broke down, this is what we can do about it, let's move on. But with Jefferson and uh with uh Jason Spears, uh they had some pretty cutting words, and I think that that goes back. Back to things like them finding out that the city didn't pay their jail bill for a year. I think it's it's stuff like that that it's happening. Those decisions are being made at City Hall at times, and you know, the forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission kind of kind of attitude.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Except I don't hear anybody asking for forgiveness. I just kind of see fingers pointing this away in that.

SPEAKER_03 22:31

Well, I mean you got a good point there. But um I think that this was just sort of for Gary Jefferson a it was just just just one too far. Yeah. And him saying that people didn't send me up here to justify and ratify. And this can't this can't be the we can't normalize this. And and and here, here.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

I'm with

Violent Crime Concerns In Columbus

SPEAKER_02 22:54

him. Well, Zach, let me change gears and talk about violent crime in the city. We had uh an older guy get arrested for shooting and injuring look like three women. Three women, according to uh a recent story. And um there's been an an uptick on talking about violent crime in the city and and what what's happening.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

Well, I mean, we've had we've had Chief in, you know, what a couple of weeks ago, yeah two or three weeks ago, uh talking about the Chief N talking about this very subject. Um the community is concerned about it. I mean, they've got this group organized uh the third annual turning it around event at Propes Park. I think last weekend it was for you know gun violence awareness. Um sixty people go to that, police chiefs there, and you've got people who are concerned and people who are more than happy to tell the police how they think that the police can better address this. A lot of those suggestions lean into that community policing bit where you know you're getting people in say at-risk neighborhoods or r that are experiencing this violent crime as hot spots for these types of things. Get officers in there, heavier patrols, but playing basketball, humanizing officers, you know, getting kids used to being around officers, stu uh stuff like that. And all of that is valid. It r it really is valid. That really is something that I think d you know does help. And I think that it's fair, and even uh uh uh Chief Daughter recognized that it's fair to say that officers could be doing more of that, but it was unfair to say that they weren't already doing some of it. Right? You hear a lot about well, we need things for kids to do because who's doing a lot of this shooting with the you know, with the obvious exception of this, you know, elderly man that got arrested the other day. A lot of this crime is as Chief Daltrey noted when he was on the podcast and noted several times in the paper, these are older teenagers and young adults that are getting mad at each other, getting guns and running around town shooting at each other. Well, they need something to do. And they need a program, they need the you know, to get involved with the parks, they need to get involved in this, they need to get involved in that, and the city needs to be providing those things. And that's valid. But here's something else that I'll say to that. This is this this is a two-way street, and uh Daughtry uh points this out in the story that we're referencing, and I agree with him. The community has got to play their part in that. This is not a this is not a situation that's gonna get solved for the community. The community has got to be an active part of the solution. So we need more things for kids to do. Well, there's programs that are dying all the time for lack of participation. Put your kids in it. Um, we need neighborhood watch, start one. Daughtery's going around all the time trying to get people to start neighborhood watches. Where are they? Start one. Go to those meetings. Put that sign up and get you a critical mass of people on your street where you're playing shut down defense against. It's like this is not the street that you come to to shoot the door dasher. This is the street you come to to get arrested for that. Because we're not going to put up with it. And it can't just be one 75-year-old lady uh sitting in a rocking chair in curlers looking at her second story blinds, being nosy. It's got to be a critical mass of people. Put the sign up, say you're on camera. Whether it's one of the sky cops, as uh the former mayor called them, or whether it's just ring doorbells all the way up and down the line. We've got your face, we got your license plate, and if you come in here and screw up, we've got your ass. That's gotta be part of this dynamic, or it's not gonna change. And I think that there's a lot of frustration from the citizens toward the police department because they don't feel like they're getting enough support from the police department. And maybe on some level that is true, but it is absolutely true that the police department is not getting enough support from the citizens to curb this because this is the citizen's city. And it's the citizens' neighborhoods, and the citizens need to take ownership of that a little bit more than I think they are.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Probably preaching to the choir. I think most of our listeners who uh are gracious enough to download our episodes and pay attention to what's going on here, they're right in the middle of this. And I think a lot of our listeners volunteer, do this and that. But um, but you're right, Zach. There's always that tendency to pass the book, to say, well, it's it's the police department's responsibility, not so much my responsibility. Um it's the church's responsibility, even though I'm actually a member of that church, right? So and and so uh there's always that somebody else needs to do it, but then when the investigator knocks on the door, they don't want to talk to him. Don't want to talk to them, even though, well, yeah, there there was a a pistol hanging out the pocket of of so-and-so, and and their car was missing a hubcat, but I don't want to relay that information because I'm afraid of retribution. That was what Chief Daughtery was telling us.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Snitches get stitches, that's what we were always told, right? And and and if that's what everybody's living by, then and the kids see that, then what are they gonna do? Okay, well snitches get stitches, so I'm not gonna be a snitch. Also, if my conflict resolution uh uh tactics and strategy involve just handling this stuff myself or getting my boys and let's go handle it together, yeah, and not calling the police or or defusing the situation, leaning on family or or whatever to defuse the situation, then all that's gonna do is is all that's gonna do is make it blow up and make it worse and just make it just Xerox copies of it down the generations, neighborhood, neighborhood, neighborhood.

Fear Of Reporting And Calling Police

SPEAKER_02 29:52

They're living in fear, a lot of them. We cannot live in fear. Second to that, we cannot live in cynicism. Right. We can talk about the um the woes of the city, the woes of the police department, the mistakes that have been made. And those are hard to overcome, will take time, but if if we continue to to trash the police or to uh speak poorly of them and and not just speak that but think that and and not want to rely upon them in an appropriate manner. If we're too cynical to call them, too cynical to talk to them, then uh we have created martial law and we have created chaos. And some might argue that we're headed that direction.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I mean, I think that police are no different from anybody else, that they're not above criticism, and I think that we need to be very vigilant in fairly cross-examining uh uh especially our police, but all of our public facilities. But I think that it's important to understand that as a citizen, you're paying taxes for that service. If your house was on fire, you would call the fire department. Right? Why? Because I don't think your water hose is gonna do the job and theirs might. Okay. Same principle. Same principle. If you're gonna if you're gonna call Casey Bush to come fix a pothole, if you're gonna because you you don't have any asphalt, if you're gonna call the fire department to come put out your house fire because your water hose is not gonna put that fire out, then why in the hell wouldn't you call the police department to deal with a law enforcement issue in your neighborhood?

SPEAKER_02 31:50

I think some folks are afraid to call the cops because they'll come here and smell weed and raid the house. I mean, there's just a lot of different concerns and a lot of complicating factors.

SPEAKER_03 32:01

That's fair. That's fair.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Yeah.

Animal Control Agreement Explained

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Tangentially related um is the issue of animal control. Bull boy. Which has jumped up in the headlines here lately because of an interlocal agreement uh that has been modified. Okay, let me kind of lay out the um the bare bones of this story. Um in years gone by, there's been an interlocal agreement between the city and the county, uh, and also with the Columbus Lounds Humane Society, that the Humane Society will be the jail for the animals. Um city pays for one and a half animal control officers, two of which are uh under the purview of the city. County pays for one and a half, one of them is a uh sheriff's officer, properly so called. All right, that ended up getting adjusted, and the county officer became actually an animal control officer of the humane society.

SPEAKER_03 33:03

Right. And then they they couldn't keep them.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Well, they just that from from what I read and from what I hear that the humane society, as much as they love animals, they just did not want to structurally keep that position within their purview, and they've said, we don't want to hire someone from within. We're gonna have to back out of this. The county said, okay, we're gonna have to figure something else out, and we're we're still waiting on a hire there. So now, as I understand it, we've got two animal control officers both in the city. Uh the county still pays part of that. You're not completely alone if you're in the county, they'll still send someone out, but it is shorthanded. It's complicated, but maybe not as dramatic as we first thought. When I first read about it, it struck me as you know what? The city hadn't paid their jail bill. Oh, God. And now shots have been fired upon Fort Sumter. And now the county is saying, all right, you're gonna have to go out there and pick up your own little doggies. Okay, to make up for that. Well, as fun as that would be to talk about I don't think that's what's happening. That's not what's happening here. All right. And so it it's basically a structural deal, and um animal control services are still available, but they're having to be reconstructed, right? I mean, that's my understanding of it. Yeah. And so uh I've lived in the county uh most of my life, actually. Uh moved around. I remember back in the 90s, there was a big problem, especially in the Steens area with mangy dogs just running around. And uh, you know, out in the county, uh there's there's a lot of concern about your animals running around. Okay, what do our animals have roaming rights? Okay, what happens if I do call the the humane society? Are they gonna put the animal down? Because most people don't want the animal euthanized, they just want it off their property, right? Right. And so there's a lot of questions. Um, number one, does your dog have roaming rights? Yes and no. Okay. You're supposed to keep your dog in your yard. Okay. If it goes around and does stuff, you're liable for that. But do you have a right to shoot someone else's pet? You do not. No, you do not. I emphatically say that. All right. So there's that. Um now, if if you have an aggressive, violent dog or cat or whatever, that's actually criminal. And and there's, you know, that the county still has responsibilities. The sheriff's office, animal control or not, is going to respond to a call for a vicious dog. That's correct. So there's that. And lastly, on the question of euthanasia and and what's going to happen if I do call animal control, I'll simply say this. I've worked with the Humane Society a very long time. They are about as close to a no-kill facility as you will find. Uh they don't have a three-day rule or a three-week rule rule necessarily. They want to keep the animals alive and and take care of them as best they can and as long as they can. And now they do have a good sharp pair of scissors. All right. They are going to help us control the pet population. Bob Barker. Per Mr. Barker's in peace. Yes. Um, Zach, I mean, any thoughts about all this? That's that's really all I I know about. And I I don't think that we have a bunch of drama per se, but um we do have um we do have service.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

How would you like to be the animal control officer for uh the the for rural Lowndes County?

SPEAKER_02 37:09

Well it's dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 37:10

Yeah, it's a dangerous job, it's a thankless job, and it doesn't pay worth of crap. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

I would have a dart gun like Ace Ventura.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

You if if they ever do uh and I hope Garrett Torbert is listening as this for the suggestion box. If they ever do an ace ventura play at Golden Triangle Theater, you need to be cast as Ace Ventura.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

All right. I love it, love it, love it. All right. It's been a good day here in Catfish Alley Studio.

Three Things To Know And Farewell

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Zach, three things we need to know.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

All right. Number one, Lemonade Day is Saturday across the Golden Triangle. More than 250 youth from across the region are signed up to sell lemonade and other goodies as part of the national initiative aimed at teaching entrepreneurial skills and encouraging philanthropy. Stands will be set up all over. Be sure to visit a few. Number two, a person of interest in a Memorial Day shooting that injured a woman and her 18-month-old child also faces an armed robbery charge in Texas. Authorities arrested 18-year-old Joseph Brooks of Crawford this week. He will remain in Lowndes County Adult Detention Center until he is extradited to Texas. Number three, the Industrial Fire Station at Lowndes County Industrial Park is planning a regional training center to help firefighters in the area gain needed skills for the job. The plan is in its early stages, but as it stands, it will primarily be funded through fees from departments who participate in the training. This is going to be a big deal for rural firefighters who are joining rural departments. And this is a very capable uh facility with a very capable people at the industrial park that are going to be paying it forward a little bit to the folks around in cities and counties and such.

SPEAKER_02 39:05

Reach out to us, tips at cdispatch.com. You can also follow me on Facebook or ex at d Chisholm double zero and leave a public comment. Keeping it real here in Catfish Alley Studio and Historic Downtown Columbus, your host has been Zach Player, and I am David Chisholm. Y'all stay friendly out there.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

I'm just a simple old country boy, but um I think that makes sense. I've stepped out and I've said what I had to say.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

You've been listening to Between the Headlines with Zach and David. That's what old people do.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

That is.